One year after the earthquake that struck Turkey and northern Syria, we take stock of the severe economic and humanitarian situation that is plaguing the areas in which we work
It was thirteen hours and twenty-four minutes on February 6, 2023, and a series of earthquakes, the strongest of which was magnitude 7.7, shook northern Syria and southern Turkey. One year after the catastrophe, it is necessary to remember the scale of the event through the numbers that marked an entire population: nearly six thousand were the victims in the Syrian territory, 12.800 people were injured, and tens of thousands of buildings were destroyed. The weeks and months that followed were trials of survival for hundreds of thousands of people, including young children and older people. The difficulty -sometimes impossibility- of gaining access to essential goods and services, such as shelter, food, water, electricity and medical care, has made the humanitarian condition that has plagued Syria for years even more severe.
A country with a 12-year ongoing conflict, an unstable economy, and a gradual decrease in funding for humanitarian interventions over the years. This is a critical picture that was exacerbated by last year’s earthquake and has weighed heavily on the 15 million people in Syria in need of humanitarian assistance, 4 million of whom are living in extreme or catastrophic conditions. According to OCHA’s latest report on the humanitarian situation in Syria, an estimated 16.7 million people (8,4 million women and 8,3 million men) will require humanitarian assistance in 2024, up from 15,3 million in 2023. Of these millions of people in need, 5,5 million are still displaced today. The impact of the earthquake has eroded the ability of essential services to function even more: water and sanitation systems and public health services have been strained. Recurrent outbreaks of epidemics, waterborne diseases, prolonged drought and water crises have brought to light the urgent need for medical intervention on vaccine-preventable diseases, which are still too uncommon among the population. Adding to the precariousness of the health care system is food insecurity, which is affecting the increase in malnutrition and mortality.
Many families, assisted by the INTERSOS team, lives in a critical economic situation, with people becoming increasingly vulnerable and unable to meet their basic needs. In the aftermath of the February 6 earthquake, INTERSOS immediately activated teams of aid workers to support the people. Women and girls were reached to deliver more than three thousand hygiene and health kits, such as essential supplies for menstrual hygiene. Nearly two thousand winter kits were distributed to children and adults to protect them from the cold. They were forced to spend most of their time outdoors and fleeing homes either uninhabitable or destroyed due to the earthquake.
INTERSOS also extended its intervention to rehabilitate schools damaged by the earthquake. Fourteen schools were rehabilitated and secured so as not to interrupt educational activities for a long time.
In 2023, in the localities of Hama and Idlib -among the hardest hit by the earthquake- the humanitarian mission reached, with its mobile clinics and teams of doctors and nurses, more than five thousand people in need of medical care or who, due to the absence of connections or because of distances, could not reach the most accessible health centres. The medical staff also responds to more specific needs, such as pediatric care for children and gynaecological care for women.
Physical health cannot exclude that of a psychological nature, which the shock of the earthquake has severely tested, so psychosocial support interventions were implemented targeting individuals, families and communities to facilitate and strengthen their capacity for recovery, reacting to the trauma suffered, which could linger in the long term.
(Photo by Burak Kara/Getty Images)